Blog Blocker : The Blog

Austin Dunlap and Zach Adair from Maitland Florida were arrested yesterday for threatening two students via MySpace.

The two kids, who attended Orangewood Christian School, threatened beatings, murder, and the rape of one of the victims’ sisters.

Hopefully they’ll be given more than a Juvenile detention center slap on the wrist, but I doubt it…

(source article)

The Professional Association of Teachers (PAT) wants YouTube to close up shop and shut down.

The PAT claims that YouTube is encouraging cyber-bullying by not immediately removing videos that the PAT claims to be inappropriate.

YouTube counters that it is but a tiny minority that break the site rules, and videos flagged by the community as inappropriate are reviewed and then removed when a violation is found.

I think that the PAT has their hearts in the right place, but they’re going about it the wrong way. Calling for the shutdown of YouTube and other similar video sites is an extreme position and they won’t get far with that attitude. They should instead encourage an active dialog with kids, parents and teachers.

For the first time in history, kids have been given a voice that can potentially travel around the globe with a few clicks. For parents, this can be a frightening thought especially for those that are unfamiliar with technology. Encouraging a public, open dialog is the best way to encourage positive use of this new technology.

Now, what to do about the food fight videos…

13 year old boy Casey Knibbs committed suicide after being savagely bullied online by his “peers”. The cruelty of teenagers in middle school never ceases to amaze me.

From the article, one of the teens involved allegedly threatened: “If you don’t kill yourself, we will do it for you.”

I was able to locate a dedication video to him, here.

I would like to extend my sincere condolences to his family. They must be having a difficult time now.

Back in my day, a good schoolyard fight could have as many as 25-30 viewers. There was hooting and hollering and those who didn’t get to see it were told about it the next day at break time.

Today, that same fight is being posted on YouTube, and most are getting thousands of viewers. When your schoolyard brawl video is viewed by an audience the size of your average NBA game (bad example? ), there’s a greater incentive to go for that extra face punch when you know the cameras are rolling.

How many of these schoolyard fights are taking place SOLELY for the online fame and glory that comes with it?

A quick YouTube search for school yard fight shows just a small sample of what’s available for viewing online.

Here’s the source article - A schoolyard fight involving 20 kids at Cumberland High School in Syndey, Australia. Here’s news coverage of the video.

Two teens were arrested for posting pictures of people on Bebo.com and adding offensive comments to those pictures. (full article)

I think this raises some interesting topics for debate.  Should bullies be criminally prosecuted for poking fun at others?  How hurtful does the bullying have to be in order to get arrested?  Can we take this to the next step and arrest REGULAR bullies, instead of just cyber bullies?

Personally, I know a few a**holes from my highschool who should have been arrested, if for nothing else than to scare them straight.

The standard schoolyard bullying that most of us experienced at some point growing up is being replaced by a new form of torment: Cyberbullying.

From the article:

According to statistics, more than a third of American teenagers who use instant messaging and social networking sites such as MySpace, FaceBook, Xanga and Friendster fall victim to electronic insults, often by schoolmates.

The phenomenon has even provoked suicides. In 2005, a 15-year-old boy named Jeff killed himself in the southern state of Florida after being harassed for two years on the Internet by other teenagers.

Another 13-year-old boy from the northeast state of Vermont, Ryan Halligan, committed suicide in 2003. Halligan, who suffered from a slight handicap, had become the butt of jokes on the Internet by several girls.

The article also goes on to mention that while classic schoolyard bullying mainly involved boys, girls are actually slightly bigger perpetrators of cyberbullying than boys.

Fortunately, there are ways for parents to get help in dealing with cyberbullies. Cyberbully.org is a good place to start. They have an excellent guide (PDF) to cyberbullying as well.

Video sites like YouTube and MySpace Video are being used by bullies to exhibit their latest conquest. From the CNN article:

But now, teens here say video Web sites like YouTube and MySpace are becoming bullying tools — beat someone up and post the video. The digital world brings a new way of telling the world “don’t mess with me!”

Some seniors at North Babylon High say such beatings on the Web - called “hopping someone” - are getting posted with growing frequency.

See the full article here.